


There's a Hole in the Healing (Re-Work)

by thevictorinox



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Discussion of Abortion, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abortion, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, trans Eggsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:59:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5723587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevictorinox/pseuds/thevictorinox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Re-Worked] In the months following V-day, Eggsy wears the mantle of Galahad. During an assignment he is severely hurt. He wakes to a more than cuts and bruises. He wakes to his own fall-out. The thing that Eggsy hates about being invalid is that the days pass achingly slow, and time doesn’t seem to be in the right order. He’s hurting constantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Hole in the Healing (Re-Work)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a previously posted story that featured A/B/O themes (it can be found in my works). After I posted it, I did a lot of thinking about this story and realized that it wasn't the story of Eggsy as an omega but Eggsy as a transman. In no way do I believe that cis-masculinity = alpha, but I felt like the original story lacked the right portrayal of Eggsy.

Later, Eggsy will remember the sound of his pulse rushing in his head and the heavy breath of his own lungs in his ears. He will remember the pops of gunfire and the blaze of his flesh torn asunder. He will remember the acidic taste of bile in the back of his throat from pushing his fatigued body too hard. He will remember the nausea he feels from breathing in the sickening scent of the wrong man's cologne and the hard crack on his skull.

 

Then he will remember nothing.

 

Eggsy’s barely coherent when he comes up a third time. All the alarms around him are screaming and feel louder than. From his left someone has shouted that his blood pressure plummeted. They’re all blurs at the corner of his eyes, shapes moving too fast for his sluggish mind to catch and define. He can’t turn his head. From the corner of his eye, he sees a plastic IV bag being clipped to the metal stand at his left, it’s colour a dark rich-ruby. It’s fascinating to watch the line slowly turn red as blood flows down and disappears against the vein under his skin. 

Eggsy stares for a moment before he catches the tall form of Merlin stalking in to one of the doctors, he can’t tell who from where he is, but he could recognize Merlin’s jumper and bald head from anywhere, even five-feet under drugged out of his mind. 

Time is a strange thing, it’s constant but never consistent. It’s sluggish, a minute feels like an hour but suddenly everything has been pushed fast-forward. His eyes are a little clearer, enough that he can watch the doctor, Morgan (?), pass Merlin his charts. They’re muttering fervently back and forth between each other before Merlin’s head snaps up and he looks colourless eyes wide. Eggsy can’t read his expression but when Merlin walks briskly up to his side, he looks scared, really scared. 

“Did you know? Eggsy, boy, did you know?!” Merlin asks forcefully, harried. Eggsy blinks sluggishly at the man, mind struggling to understand the words, let alone what Merlin is asking him. 

“Wha-” He tries as he feels unconsciousness swallow him back.

Over the course of the next few days, Eggsy wavers in and out. He catches pieces of conversations whispered over his head by worried nurses. Saving something, saving it, saving him. He cannot quite suss out what they mean and he never hears the whole sentence before he’s back under. He becomes more and more aware of the fire-hot pain in his chest from his injuries and cries out. The only relief that’s offered is the bliss of sleep.

 

Roxy comes and goes, he knows because he remembers seeing her face, a sunny welcomed sight against the cold walls of the infirmary. She’s brought JB once or twice, allows him to settle on the side of the bed. Eggsy goes under, smiling with his fingers in the pug’s fur each time. 

It’s a week before Eggsy’s medication is dialed back enough where he can stay awake for a more than a few minutes at a time. His vision is still blurry around the edges but focuses the longer he is awake. Merlin must be monitoring him because he comes in a few minutes later. 

“Eggsy, hello.” He says, but it sounds wrong, strangely guilty and apologetic. It’s then that Eggsy starts checking for his limbs, relief washing over him when he sees both of his feet wiggle under the blanket. His hands come up to touch his face, he’ll explore the network of tubing and wires that disappear under the edge of the blue gown later. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks, it comes out sounding raspy. They did just take the breathing tube out yesterday. Merlin looks relieved when he speaks but then fidgets and looks away.

“M-Merlin….tell me what’s wrong.” It’s thin, enough that Merlin comes to settle on the arm of a chair that has been pulled to his bedside.

“You’re injuries were extensive. We didn’t know what state of functioning you would have when you finally woke, let alone if you would.” Eggsy’s pinched expression must indicate to Merlin that he needed to extrapolate, Merlin continues. “You have two gunshot wounds to the chest a right abdomen. In addition, you suffered a traumatic brain injury from being struck in the head, likely during close range combat. It’s hard to tell, your glasses were broken during the fight.”

Eggsy is reaching up as Merlin speaks, the right of his head is shaved clean and there’s thin gauze taped to the side of his head just under the crown. He can feel a thick seam of flesh bound together with staples before Merlin snatches hand back.

“Don’t. It’s was a nasty wound, it needs time to heal undisturbed.” The wizard lets go of Eggsy’s hand. “You were touch and go, you lost a lot of blood before we got you back. We were having a hard time stabilizing your blood pressure, took quite a few transfusions.” He faltered, looking down at the charts, he was stalling. “Eggsy….we’re still not sure about the fetus…”

Merlin’s eyes flick down the length of the young knight’s torso. Eggsy follows his gaze and suddenly feels sick all over again.

“W-wot. I’m not-” He can’t be. He hasn’t had a heat since he was seventeen thanks to the suppressants. Merlin looks at him with a pitying glance.

“It appears you are…12 weeks.” Merlin looks even more uncomfortable now that he’s breaking the news to someone who was ignorant of it. “Eggsy...you didn’t know you were pregnant at all?”

“F-fuck no.” He feels panic like bile rise in the back of his throat. “We only did it the one time an’ I’m on T, I don’ ‘ave periods or nuffin’.” Talking about this with Merlin feels disgusting. It's a kick in the gut, yet another thing that reminds him he wasn't born male like the others, he had to become. He had to claw and scrape, bend over backwards to simply be enough. Eggs has fought with himself too long to think he is anything but male.

Merlin’s looking at the ceiling right now looking like he’d rather be scraping the shit out of the dog kennels than having this conversation. 

“Eggsy, testosterone isn’t a fail-safe birth control method. It does reduce fertility, but there is always a risk of pregnancy. The purpose of hormone replacement therapy , as you know is to augment secondary sex characteristics. Your partner didn’t use a condom?” Eggsy shakes his head fractionally, looking paler and lost. Merlin was too fucking tired to be educating his very adult knights on proper sex education. Were it possible, he’d kill the man who knocked up one of his best because they couldn’t use a bloody rubber. Though, sex education for Trans individuals has always been woefully lacking he feels.

“Look...If it dies, fine by me...I don’t want it.” Eggsy’s voice is shaking a little. “I can’t ‘ave no baby. ‘M not female, and I’m not fit for it, goin’ father all alone...I can’t. So jus’ let it die or ‘ave the doctor abort it...I can’t….please, don’t make me...I don’t want...I can't...” Eggsy looks fractured in a way that Merlin hasn’t seen since Harry died. He reaches out and settles a hand on the boy’s arm, because right now, he really does look so young in his fear. They have of the top gadgets down in their arsenal, and Merlin considers himself to be a seasoned man, but the wizard still doesn’t think he’d ever be prepared for this.

“It’s fine, it’s fine lad. No one will make you keep it.” He draws a breath. “We can’t abort it...not yet, you’re still too unstable physically. We need to give you another week or two for healing and then we can talk with Morgan about your options.” Eggsy looks like he’s on the verge of tears but is steadfast in not crying, or perhaps still in shock. 

Merlin moves on to addressing the treatment plan with Eggsy who numbly nods through it while stealing glances at his own stomach like it’s betrayed him. The older man cannot fathom the dysphoria that must be swirling in Eggy’s mind, he makes a note to assign him a psych appointment. When Merlin leaves, he promises to send Roxy down once she’s out of the range. They have been like strange life-rafts to one another since their candidacy for Lancelot. 

A week goes by and Eggsy improves fractionally. The doctors and nurses tell him he’s doing great but it doesn’t feel like enough to the new Galahad. They continue to monitor the fetus, Eggsy asks once to see the sonogram and immediately has a panic attack, pulling four stitches as he empties the contents of his stomach onto the polished concrete floor. After that, they turn the screen away from him, silently watching with the volume off, he doesn’t ask again. 

Eggsy doesn’t tell Roxy about it, but she must know because she’s settles at the edge of his bed and protectively pets at the arm not studded with IV’s. She tells him about her missions, she’s had three in the time that he’s been injured. That they’ve selected a new Arthur but doesn’t say who. Eggsy nods on, listening and feeling fractionally more normal.

Eggsy wakes one day to the sound of voices outside his room, shouting and angry. He cannot make out the words but one of them sounds like Merlin’s Scottish burr twisting the vowels. Eggsy hears his own name and feels acutely self-conscious that the fight is about him. 

When Merlin comes in later, stone faced, and tired-looking. Eggsy asks what it is about. All he gets is angry muttering about stupid, irresponsible men as Merlin watches Eggsy punch in his terminal passwords so Merlin can access the rest of the footage. 

The thing that Eggsy hates about being invalid is that the days pass achingly slowly, and time doesn’t seem to be in the right order. He’s hurting constantly. They won’t give him more than the bare minimum of narcotic pain-medication despite his point that he won’t be keeping the foetus within him. He tries not to think about it at all while he’s awake but when he’s asleep he has dreams about a small child with his shade of dark brassy hair and deep brown eyes.

Eggsy wakes slowly from one of those dreams, to a steady stream of whispered words. The baritone feels like a comforting familiarity behind his sleep-sticky eyelids. He decides he must still be dreaming if he can hear Harry, if he can feel his hand in the other man’s palm, thumb smoothing against his fingers. Eggsy concentrates because he doesn’t want this to end, he wants to know and stay within the warm river that is Harry’s steady apologies, curse words and claims that he didn’t know, that he had no idea….

Eggsy is waking however, and the fluorescent lights feel brutal against his eyelids so he tightens them closed against it. It takes him a full thirty seconds to realize that Harry’s voice hadn’t stopped when he woke but was now pleading his name to the air.

“Eggsy? Are you awake?”

Eggsy hopes not but he opens his eyes anyway. 

Harry is sitting there, very real and alive, clad in dark charcoal suiting. Behind the tortoiseshell glasses he can see the tendrils of pink shiny scars snaking from an eye, now milky grey, back to over his ear. They knife through the hair that Eggsy can tell is still growing out to it’s proper length. He suddenly feels less self-conscious about his own head being shaved.

Eggsy laughs. 

It’s creaky and a bit manic. and the punctuation of sound causes Harry to frown deeply in concern. He laughs because the both of them look like a matched set, fucked up by bullets and brawls, wearing their scars on their faces and scalps for all the damn world to see. He laughs because life has not been fair to Eggsy. His entire psyche is a poster board for a past emblazoned with dysphoria, depression, self-harm and abuse. He worked so hard and gave so much to earn his place in the very traditional Kingsman, despite being transgender, and life is still not pulling its punches. He laughs because he’s pregnant by the man he’s held a torch for since this whole business began, a man he thought was dead but somehow, suddenly isn’t and Eggsy doesn’t know what to do with that. 

Then he sobs, eyes screwed tightly to fend off tears that he thought he was done shedding for Harry Hart. The older man is leaning over him, pulling Eggsy gingerly close muttering apologies and promises that it will be alright against Eggsy’s naked temple.

“You were f-fuckin’ dead.” 

“I know, I know.” Harry echoes, faint, like another apology, against the shell of his ear.

“You were dead.” He repeats again, trying to make sense of it. Logically, rationally, Eggsy knows that Harry was recovering himself and couldn’t tell Eggsy. Someone should have fucking told him. The way Harry breathes it sounds like he’s winding up for another apology.

“I was dead...and then I wasn’t. It took me months to recover, that road was not easy. I thought it might be better if I did it alone...in private. I had just returned to Kingsman when you were hurt. The severity of your injuries made it an inappropriate time to tell you.” 

Silence descends against them for several long moments, their breathing filling the space between them as Eggsy’s sobs dissipate. He’s so fucking grateful but he’s still expecting to wake up empty and alone.

“Eggsy…” Harry draws the name over his lips, and Eggsy knows where this is going. “Merlin told me….about your condition.” The way his hands curl around Eggsy’s arms feels possessive. “I didn’t know….” He whispers. 

“Yeah. Well, no one did...not even me.” How was he supposed to know? He didn't realize it was a possibility. Eggsy feels like he’s unraveling behind his ribs all over again but it feels different this 

“I know you want to abort it.” He’s clinical in the way he says it, words not betraying how he feels on the matter. Eggsy swallows back the lump in his throat.

“What do you want?” He asks, timidly. 

Harry’s eyes betray how he feels on the matter, they move down Eggsy’s torso to his stomach. It’s mostly bandages right now but there is a sign, the barest hint of a curve. Eggsy looked, when he was alone and feeling brave. 

“I want you to support you as you make that choice for yourself.” It doesn't help him. Harry has always been supportive, even when they started this mess.

Crippling dysphoria aside, Eggsy knows that they shouldn’t even be having a hypothetical what-if, he shouldn’t humour it in his mind. Not in their line of work. Not when they’re both riddled with bullet holes and wear scars plain to see. Sentiment is exploitable, connections, family, even more dangerous. It would take Eggsy out of the field for a year, if not longer. The Kingsman are still recovering their ranks after V-day. He would expose himself to ridicule from the more traditionally minded members of the organization.

Eggsy remembers his dreams of the little child with dark brassy hair and deep brown eyes. He breathes deep and sad. He covers his eyes with his hand and takes hitching breaths, feeling the solid muscle and bone of Harry beneath his suit close and present.

“Fuck….I’m sorry….” He says his apology for the first time. Harry murmurs that it’s okay, that he supports him against his hair. 

When the world slows down and Eggsy doesn’t feel like his lungs are trying to rip themselves from his chest, he has enough courage to look at Harry.

“If I said yes, If I wanted to keep it. Would that have been okay?” Harry is contemplative for long moments before speaking.

“There are many things that espionage does not afford us, children, are among them. My position as Arthur and yours as Galahad would have subjected any child to a life of absence, worry and danger.” He’s looking down at the crumpled cotton sheets under their intertwined hands. “I would have counted myself lucky to have been a father.” Eggsy thinks about it, and agrees. He loves Daisy like nothing else, but he’s so grateful that she is his sister and not his own.

Harry is at war with himself under the smooth expression and flawless kit. Eggsy reaches to touch his face, he doesn’t have to ask aloud for Harry to tell him.

“I was wondering...if possible….I might say goodbye.” 

It wrenches cold and hard in Eggsy’s chest. There’s still a heartbeat there, they haven’t even terminated yet but they’re already letting go. He pries open the gown and pulls down the blanket to his waist. It's the first and only time he’s willing to acknowledge it as part of him. Harry’s hand is trembling when he carefully places it against his stomach where there is a baby, barely the size of a peach nestled in the cradle of his hips. With Harry, Eggsy says goodbye to the possibility of a child. He welcomes the road ahead.

 

Months roll by and the seasons have shifted to Autumn, Galahad comes strolling in fresh off a mission, at Merlin’s heels as they file into the dining room. His wounds from before have healed, leaving smooth patches of distorted skin against his torso. The scar along the crown of his head means he’s started parting his hair to the right instead of it’s previous left of center. He doesn’t mind it most days, Harry seems to like the new style.

Galahad walks with a sturdy gate, as he takes his seat at Arthur’s right. The King frowns upon seeing him slightly, Eggsy’s brow arches. His confusion is answered when Harry’s feed pops as a thumbnail at the bottom his glasses, as an officially documented couple they have access to one another’s feeds at will.

Through Harry’s perspective he sees the dark smudge aching over his cheekbone. He licks the pad of his thumb and rubs the smudge clean off the skin. It causes Harry to clear his throat as he begins the meeting, Eggsy grins wickedly for a second. They’ve settled back into this sense of normalcy, as much as one working for a secret agency could call normal. They’re learning how all the pieces fit back together, finding they lay well. It has taken time, but as Eggsy looks around the table with veteran and newly minted knights, he feels the sense that they are all made anew.


End file.
